Israel Loring School launches ‘Loring Rocks’

Monday

May 14, 2018 at 2:09 PMMay 14, 2018 at 2:09 PM

SUDBURY — The Israel Loring School in Sudbury launched “Loring Rocks,” a collaborative art project involving the entire K-5 student population, modeled after the national initiative “The Kindness Rocks Project,” which focuses on placing rocks decorated with messages of inspiration across the country.

The project kicked off in March with dozens of parent volunteers and students prepping the rocks. Loring students, teachers and staff painted 1,000 rocks with designs and messages of inclusiveness, school pride, encouragement and kindness that focus on inspiring the Loring and greater Sudbury community. Five hundred rocks are being installed and will remain in the Loring Rocks garden, while an additional 500 will be placed throughout Sudbury—conservation land, hiking trails, and other public areas—for others to discover and relocate—so “Loring Rocks” expands to “Sudbury Rocks” and becomes a community-wide benefit. Students may also choose to take the rocks to other locales in the Boston area or beyond. Each rock has a sticker with the historic zip code (01776), allowing the finder to know where it originated.

“With any art initiative, you never know what the end result is going to be,” said Loring art teacher Briana Danielson. “With ‘Loring Rocks,’ the school community was completely overwhelmed with the incredible creations these students did. We were hoping that the rocks would show Loring’s core values of respect, responsibility, best effort, and caring—and what we got was so much more than that. We can’t wait for these messages to make their way around Sudbury—or farther away—and for others to experience the same joy that our students felt when creating them.”

The goal is to continue the project for future classes at the Loring School and to serve as a model for other schools to replicate.

The “Loring Rocks” project is supported by a grant from the Sudbury Education Resource Fund.